The Great North 10k took place yesterday morning before the final day of competition at the European Athletics Team Championships. The Great North 10k finished in the stadium at Gateshead just before the track and field athletes took their positions in the arena.

Ryan McLeod was the first man across the line. He out-kicked Yared Hagos in an exciting sprint finish on the track. McLeod's time of 30:20 brought his handicap score down by a full point from MINUS 3.4 to MINUS 4.4 but Yared's time of 30:32 kept his handicap score unchanged at MINUS 4.0. This reflected their vSSS scores, that indicate whether a runner has had a particularly good run in comparison to their own recent performances, or not. Ryan's vSSS was 0.5 whereas Yared's was 0.6.Gemma Steel defended her title by finishing first woman in a time of 33:26 and this brought her handicap score down very slightly from MINUS 0.8 to MINUS 0.9

The inaugural Shrewsbury Half Marathon took place alongside the Shrewsbury Marathon and the event was a pronounced a resounding success after 1715 finished the half marathon and 250 finished the marathon in 'The Quarry', after running laps of the town. The overall sentiment was that the races should become an annual event.

The winners of the half marathon were a husband and wife duo were Oliver and Hilary Mott, giving them cause for celebration. Hundreds of the runners were raising money for good causes including a team of police officers raising money for the trust set up in memory of Georgia Williams from nearby Telford.

The marathon was won byWayne Dashper and the first woman was Becky Lewis.

Congratulations to all of you who raced this weekend. We think this may have been one of the busiest race weekends for the runbritain community as we had the highest number of visitors ever to our rankings pages.